Criterion Watch: ‘My Dinner With Andre’

Have you ever had one of those moments when you feel like the planets have aligned and fate has done you a favor? I had one of those moments the other day. It just so happened that a favorite movie of mine, one that has been out of print for years, finally got released on Criterion DVD last Tuesday, which just happened to be my birthday.

Sure, I know that this is all just coincidence and that getting all excited about any one movie seems childish, but telling me that this is just just a movie is like telling Tiger Woods that golf is just a silly game without any real meaning or value. I remember seeing ‘My Dinner With Andre’ years ago at a friends house who had an old VHS copy. I instantly fell in love and have been eagerly awaiting the release of this DVD ever since.

In Louis Malle’s captivating and philosophical My Dinner with André, actor and playwright Wallace Shawn sits down with friend and theater director André Gregory at an Upper West Side restaurant, and the two proceed into an alternately whimsical and despairing confessional on love, death, money, and all the superstition in between. Playing variations on their own New York–honed personas, Shawn and Gregory, who also wrote the screenplay, dive in with introspective, intellectual gusto, and Malle captures it all with a delicate, artful detachment. A fascinating freeze-frame of cosmopolitan culture, My Dinner with André remains a unique work in cinema history. — Criterion

Not only did Criterion make me one happy birthday boy by releasing this movie with their famous Midas touch approach to restoring and optimizing great films, but it’s also a two-disc set with goodies for me to enjoy. The official DVD release date was June 23, but you may have to put on your walking shoes to find this in stores. I managed to finally locate one copy at a local Borders, and they had to go in back and dig through boxes from that day’s shipment just to find that.

Special Features:

• New, restored high-definition digital transfer.
• New video interviews with actors André Gregory and Wallace Shawn by filmmaker and friend Noah Baumbach.
• “My Dinner with Louis,” an episode from the BBC program Arena, in which Shawn interviews director Louis Malle.
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Amy Taubin and the prefaces written by Gregory and Shawn for the published screenplay.

Go to Criterion.com to read more about ‘My Dinner With Andre’ or to purchase the DVD.